


In Lower Places

by Erisette



Series: i've got friends [2]
Category: Leverage, White Collar
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:59:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erisette/pseuds/Erisette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>just two honest (ish) guys talking about crime in a prison cell</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Lower Places

**Author's Note:**

> for my hc_bingo square ‘imprisonment’. It’s fairly pointless but I want ALL THE NATE AND PETER. All of it.

 

It took about a month to realize that Burke was really not handling imprisonment half as well as Nate.

 

Physically, he was fine; he didn’t have a healing bullet would, to start with, and Eliot’s contacts tended to hover obtrusively in the vicinity when there started to be grumbling about the Fed. But mentally…well. He was in some ways very similar to Nate—law-abiding enough to accept that his sentence was justified, but not so rule-bound that he actually regretted having done what he saw as necessary to help people. The main difference was that Nate had, more or less, volunteered for his current situation. Burke not so much.

 

They talked a little, throughout the dull days, but Burke tended to keep to himself and neither of them were particularly voluble. Nate only realized that something more than the usual honest man blues was amiss when his cellmate was gone for an hour to have a visitor and came back looking visibly agitated. Nate looked at him curiously over his law book. “Unpleasant visitor?”

 

Burke snorted, pacing the tiny floorspace with stiff-legged annoyance. “On the contrary, it was my wife.” He stopped at the cell door, fists planted on his hips and mouth locked tightly. “The first time I was actually able to be in the room without a glass between us. Only the second time I’ve seen her since I got in here.”

 

“Wait, come again?” Nate discarded the book and sat up straight. “Only twice in almost a month? I know this is max, but you’re a white-collar convict, at most, and she’s your wife. Only twice?”

 

“You don’t have to tell me!” He spun around and dropped into his own cot, hands tracing angry paths in the air. “I know we’ve kicked over some anthills lately, but who in the hell….”

 

“Sounds like you’ve made some enemies in high places.”

 

Burke gave him an unimpressed look. “You sound like that pleases you.”

 

“Well, no, not as such…” he ran his hand over the book cover, absently fingering the frayed edges of the binding. “But you know what they say about judging a man by his enemies.” He grinned, then grew serious again. “Sorry. Good news about that is, that kind of stall is limited. And you’ve got lots of contacts on both sides of the fence who would be willing to look deeper….”

 

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Burke said. He held up a postcard-sized object, passing it over when Nate squinted at it. “I can’t trust them to stay out of trouble.”

 

Nate looked over the object; it was a canvas-board, painted with detailed and delicate brushwork; at first glance it seemed to be a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, but the model was clearly different, a woman with a modern hairstyle and clever blue eyes. “In the style of da Vinci. The model’s beautiful.”

 

Burke smiled at that, pride bright in his eyes as he took the painting back. “El, Elizabeth. My wife.”

 

“Lucky man,” Nate said honestly. He nodded to the painting. “Why is that trouble?”

 

“I’m gone for one month, and what is Neal doing? He’s proving to anyone who looks that he can forge a da Vinci. Hell, he probably HAS forged at least one in the past.”

 

“Ahhh. I see.”

 

“Yeah, I bet you do.” Burke smirked at him. “You’ve got a whole team of thieves and conmen, right? How come they haven’t broken you out yet?”

 

“I’d protest about those allegations, except for the fact that you’re in jail same as me,” Nate said.

 

Burke sighed, levity fading as quickly as it’d come. “Yeeeeeah. So very much in jail.”

 

Nate looked at him for a moment, debating, before jerking his head towards the floor. “Come on. Sit down and play chess with me.”

 

“What are the stakes?”

 

Nate pulled out the chess set, a cheap plastic thing, and set it down with a challenging look. “A story per piece. Bigger pieces for bigger felonies.”

 

*** *** *** ***

 

“The Wire in an hour? Are you serious?”

 

*** *** *** ***

 

“You guys switched roles? For the whole case? Oh, there are a lot of guys who would have paid good money to see that.”

 

“Oh, shut up, Nate.”

 

“After you, Peter.”


End file.
